How I Learned That Service Means SacrificeThis summer, one of my heroes passed away. The man who inspired me to become a Marine through his selfless service to others. This is our story.
This summer, one of my heroes passed away. The man who inspired me to become a Marine through his selfless service to others. This is our story. Pleus Hall was one of those typical church meeting halls you find all across Missouri. A large room, usually full of tables, with a kitchen on one end. At Immaculate Conception parish — IC for short — the hall was used for all sorts of gatherings, both on Sunday and throughout the week. It probably still is.
For a stretch of time, before my littlest sister was born, it was used for something quite special to our family. My parents and several of their friends had been deeply involved in running twice-a-month dinners there for anyone who wanted to come. The idea was that people who were struggling to feed themselves and their families would have a reliable place to go a couple times a month. They believed it was a good Christian way to serve the community and made sure us kids were a part of it. We enjoyed it quite a bit. In nice weather we could even walk, since the hall was only about a third of a mile from our house.
The guy who oversaw the parish kitchen, Al Mueller, made things fun and interesting for all the kids whose parents brought them to help out. First, we would set the tables, and then we could sign up for our nightly duties. Things like helping clean up, gathering trash, re-setting the tables, greeting people, or whatever else needed doing. When Mr. Al would ask us what chores we wanted to do, my sister, who was a year younger than me, and I would shoot up our hands.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh! We want to do the dishes! We want to do the dishes!” We would yell. He thought we were nuts. I mean, what kid wants to do the dishes? But he let us roll with it. As for me and my sister, we thought Mr. Al was the one who was crazy. You see, at home, doing the dishes was quite the ordeal. You had to clear them from the table, stack them all up, fill the tubs with water, scrub the dishes clean, rinse them, set them on the counter, and then towel them dry before putting them away. And I can tell you right now, when the person cooking isn’t the same one cleaning, there always seems to be a lot more to scrub! The parish, on the other hand, had dishwasher machines, so doing the dishes there was no more than waiting for someone to bring them in from the tables, tossing them into the machine, and pressing a button. We felt like we were totally scamming old Mr. Al by calling that a chore! I’m not sure when it happened, he never let on to us kids, but at some point he figured out why we thought doing the dishes was such a good deal. Eventually, for reasons unknown to me, the dinners ended and we didn’t see Al as much anymore. Then, one day, his big blue pickup truck rumbled up in front of our house and parked. He came up to the house and talked to my mom for a minute and then we all walked out to his truck. He climbed up and pointed to something in the bed, smiling. It was a dishwasher. Al hadn’t forgotten our unexpected enthusiasm in doing the dishes back during those dinners and, when he later remodeled the kitchen in his house, he saved his old dishwasher, loaded it up on his truck, and brought it by our house. A friend of his installed it for us. A common characteristic of people who strengthen their communities is that they understand that service often means sacrifice. I was surrounded by it growing up. People taking care of others when it won’t bring them any glory or benefit, often despite the fact that it’s extra work for them with no reward beyond helping their fellow man. In fact, if someone were to look at what people here in the heartland do for one another with a cold and calculating eye, they could easily conclude that individually it doesn’t make any sense. But we help each other anyway. Because it’s how we survive as a whole. Many years later, I reconnected with Al when I was trying to figure out how I could best pay back my community for everything they had done for me and my family over the years. Al, a Marine Vietnam veteran, took me down to the Marine Corps League in Apache Flats, Missouri, far out on the west side of town. There I met a crew of Americans who did what their country asked of them, and who had never asked for anything in return. I listened to their stories. Of a war their politicians had sent them to, most of whom were drafted, and what it was like coming home. After watching their best friends bleed out in front of them thousands of miles from home. One old Marine, Ron, a Jeff City High School grad just like me, pulled out his guitar and sang some songs for us. About answering the call for your country. About how their fathers had fought in the second world war and come home heroes. How they thought it would be the same for them, and how very, very, different it ended up being for them during and after Vietnam. He gave me a CD, called The Young and the Brave, that was full of his songs. I listened to it on loop for weeks and I still have it. These were the guys I looked up to growing up. Our Vietnam vets might not have come home heroes, but they were my heroes. For the selfless service they gave their country and continued to give to their communities, despite what they had gone through.
They inspired me to follow in their footsteps and become a U.S. Marine. And so I did. Al even came all the way out to Quantico, Virginia, for my Officer Candidate School Graduation and gave my mom his old Vietnam Second Lieutenant rank bars to pin onto me at the rank ceremony.  Lucas’s OCS graduation with Al and Lucas’s Mom— Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense. Before I knew it, I was overseas just like them. I led a police training team of twelve Marines and a Navy Corpsman in Iraq. I occasionally thought of those old timers when planning our missions outside the wire and making sure the Marines in my charge, the young and the brave, came home safely. I thought about them again when I came home from Iraq, and both times I came home from Afghanistan. Because unlike them, each time I returned to American soil, I was thanked for my service and treated with the utmost respect.
My generation of veterans would have never received that welcome if not for the suffering that our Vietnam vet brothers and sisters went through. And when people ask me why I joined the Marine Corps, instead of some other service, I think about Al and I tell them, “You never forget the man who saved you 45 minutes of hard labor at the sink every night.”
### Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.
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Sunday, August 18, 2024
How I Learned That Service Means Sacrifice
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